appleJAC Users Group

The Secret Screen Capture Shortcut

Okay, you probably already know the ol’ Command-Shift-3 shortcut for taking a screen capture of your entire screen, and you may even know about Command-Shift-4, which gives you a crosshair cursor so you can choose which area of the screen you want to capture. But perhaps the coolest, most-secret hidden capture shortcut is Control-Command-Shift-3 (or 4), which, instead of creating a file on your desktop, copies the capture into your Clipboard memory, so you can paste it where you want. (I use this to paste screen captures right into Photoshop.)

Great Websites: Palm InfoCenter

Do you use a Palm Device?  Perhaps a Treo phone.  This website is for you.

Palm Infocenter is a single point of information for the use of Palm devices and the news about what is new in the Palm community.  In addition to daily news updates, there are reviews of devices and forms for you to search out your problems and find solutions. 

The site also has software reviews of many palm software products.  It's worth a look if youuse one of these handy devices.

How would you like a 30" display

High-quality, high-resolution displays have always been among the most expensive peripherals one could add to a personal computer. The first 21-inch CRT displays capable of displaying millions of colors were two or three times as expensive as 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, yet offered lower resolution
than a modern 15-inch laptop computer.

If you are lusting after one of the Apple 30" displays, here is a 6 page publication that gives you lots of information to help you justify the purchase.

Apple Pro Tip: Converting to TIFF, JPG, or Photoshop

Want to change most any graphic into a Photoshop file? Just open the file in Preview, go under the File menu, and choose Save As…, where you can export your graphic in Photoshop format. But you’re not limited to Photoshop format — Preview will also export your file as a JPEG, PICT, BMP (for sharing files with PC users), PICT, Targa (for video), and more. If the format you’re saving in has options (such as quality and compression settings for JPEG and TIFF images), they will appear near the bottom of the dialog.

MacWorld Expo 2007 Taking Shape

Macworld Conference & Expo is the only event where you can witness cool technology, see demonstrations of the latest products, discover creative tools to inspire your imagination and expand your taste for the digital lifestyle. Macworld 2007 is guaranteed to stimulate your creativity, leaving you refreshed and ready to create, invent, design and achieve your professional and personal goals.

The Exhibit Hall is the place to explore a showcase of leading technology vendors and interact in hands-on demonstrations with some of the hottest technological innovations before they hit the marketplace.

MacWorld Expo also includes conferences for all types of MacUsers.  Take a look at the MacWorld Expo website for more information

Macworld Conference & Expo is located at:

The Moscone Center
747 Howard Street San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: 415.974.4000

Hear the difference Bose technologies make

Some people hate Bose products but I personally feel Bose really understands sound and makes products that take advantage of that understanding.

Now Bose has a new product that should be a wonderfull addition to my black iPod Nano.  Bose in-ear headphones are the only in-ear headphones on the market with proprietary TriPort® acoustic headphone structure. This exclusive technology enables these headphones to provide greater low-frequency output than most conventional earbuds.

Earbuds can be difficult to keep in place and may feel uncomfortable after extended use. But new Bose in-ear headphones are carefully engineered to remain comfortable and stable for hours. Their contoured, soft silicone tips rest gently and securely in the outer bowl of your ears, even during long listening sessions. And they stay put when you're on the move.

For a more accurate fit, these removable tips come in three sizes. And don't be surprised if the best option for you is a different size tip for each ear.

I look forward in being able to try out a pair of these.

New Tech Stores Open in Jefferson City

In the last couple of weeks, two new stores that sell technology products have opened in Jefferson City.  Unfortunately, neither of these products sell Macintosh computers.  But don't dispare, these stores do sell some items for the Mac user.

Office Depot, opened their store on Missouri Blvd. about three weeks ago.  This store sells office products and quite a few technology items too.  One thing that they do sell, is a small section of Macintosh Software.  In visiting the store, I found no fewer than 14 Macintosh titles for sale on their shelves.  They also sell memory key drives, external harddisks, and computer accessories usable to the average Mac user.

The second store that opened, right next door to the Office Depot is Best Buy.

Best Buy, is a full line electronics retailer. They sell nearly everything technology related with the exception of Macintosh Computers.  They sell memory key drives, external harddisks, and computer accessories just like Office Depot but also have much more.  Best Buy has a great selection of Digital Cameras and video cameras and a much better selection of accessory items.  One caution is that Best Buy often sell products for HIGHER than manufacturers suggested retail price.  Hard to believe but I spotted at least 10 items at prices higher than you can get it anywhere else.  There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to pay more than you have to.  Don't be caught in the "Only place in town" situation and pay a higher price than you need to.

Apple Training Series: Mac OS X System Administration Reference, Volume 1

Mac OS X is the easiest operating system to use. I believe everyone agrees with that statement. Unfortunately, all that simplicity for the user also means that, under the hood, there is a heck of a lot going on. Only recently has PeachPit Press added titles to it’s Apple Training Series for books to assist system administrators and support professionals in learning about all the underpinnings of this easy-to-use operating system. 

The Mac OS X System Administration Reference is the first of a series of books that details how Apple’s operating system works. This comprehensive reference book covers many technical topics that someone would need who might want to provide this type of support. Topics include the areas of Directory Services, Security, and Networking and File Services.

To accomplish the goals of the book, the author has divided the text into 29 separate lessons that segment the subjects into smaller pieces to make them more digestible to someone trying to learn. Each lesson includes illustrations and tables to make the book work as either a text type book where someone can work through the lesson, or a reference book that allows you to move to a particular lesson and learn the specific information you want to find.

The first 11 lessons describe the “ins and outs” of directory services. It begins in the general understanding of the subject, continues into the accessibility issues and their integration with Active Directory, and concludes with discussing how to plan a deployment of Directory Services.

In the next 10 chapters, Security is covered in detail. First, general security information was covered, then security of each server component in Mac OS X Server is described.  Content includes mail security, authentication, network configuration, and web security.  The lessons finish off with discussing maintenance and intrusion detection along with how to audit security issues that may be happening on your system.

The final 8 lessons cover Networking and File Services. This covers unmanaged networks, file permissions, and network file services. In addition, remote file systems are illustrated to teach administrators how they may be accessed from Mac OS X and other systems from which data may be needed.

Overall, the areas presented in this book are covered in an easy-to-understand manner if you happen to be a system administrator. If you are not, this book would likely be considered overkill for you. The other important point is that the topics covered are server-related topics, so if you do not administer a Mac OS X server, or at least have immediate access to one, this book may not be for you.

By Schoun P. Regan.
Published by Peachpit Press.
ISBN-10: 0-321-36984-X; ISBN-13: 978-0-321-36984-0; Published: Dec 13, 2005; Copyright 2006; Dimensions 7-3/8 X 9-1/8; Pages: 848; Edition: 1st.
Price $59.95,

Join the Peachpit Club and save on great books: another Vendor Discount Offer!

You can save 25% on all Peachpit books by becoming a Peachpit Club Member. Membership is free and easy. All you have to do is answer a few questions in Peachpit's online survey, which you can access from any book page.

After you fill out the survey, you'll save 25% on top of the user group savings you receive by entering the coupon code at checkout. (You cannot use this discount in conjunction with any other coupon codes.)
Normal Price: Varies UG Price: 25%

Keep in touch with IntelliMerge dynamic e-mail communication

First off, bulk email sending is not the same as spamming.  Spammers user trickey methods to send from other people's servers or forge who the email is from.  Bulk email on the other hand is a necessary business need when there is a purpose to send an email to a large number of people.

When you have a need to do this, Intellimerge is a teriffic tool to do it with.

IntelliMerge simplifies keeping in touch with customers and friends. Featuring an integrated message editor, recipient database system, and message mailer, it's all you need to manage contacts and send personalized e-mail newsletters, letters, invoices, alerts, and more over the Internet.

By using "merge tags" in IntelliMerge e-mail messages (such as <<Full Name>> or <<Birthday>>), you can effortlessly create a template for IntelliMerge to automatically mesh with a list of recipients in order to send each person a message customized just for them. With the easy-to-use, Mac-like interface you've come to expect from Intelli Innovations that doesn't sacrifice power for simplicity, IntelliMerge is the Mac's most versatile tool for customer communication.

IntelliMerge features:

• Plain text and HTML e-mail messages, file attachments, message priority, return path, and customized headers. Inserting e-mail merge fields from your database is as easy as dragging an item from a floating palette.
• Integrated recipient list database, giving you the capability to create a list of customers, edit their specific information, and send out mailings.
• Import functions let you gather a list of recipients from Entourage, Outlook Express, Now Contact, FileMaker, Mac OS X's Address Book or any tab/comma delimited text file.
• Web Page E-Mails: Post your message to a web page, then send it with IntelliMerge and everyone will receive your page right as a message -- best of all, images and links will "just work". No fuss required.
• Customizable fields store the information you want to keep about your customers, including any assortment of text, dates, or numbers.
• Integrated mailer program sends merged e-mails through your local mail server (SMTP), captures and records errors, and features the ability to share the load between several servers at once for larger mailings.
• After-mailing report with integrated pie chart.
• Advanced database management functions include automatically highlighting invalid e-mail addresses, duplicate addresses in the database, and fast export capabilities generate reports in other applications.
• AutoSubscriber: Let your subscribers and members add or unsubscribe themselves from your subscriber lists, without having to have IntelliMerge open. Simply upload the IntelliMerge AutoSubscriber PHP script to any web server for instant integration with existing web sites. AutoSubscriber also gives you the flexibility of adding a one-click "unsubscribe" link to the bottom of your messages. Just add it and forget it.
• Message Preflight allows you to view each customized message before sending it out, then check things over to make sure your mailing is exactly the way you want before pressing send.
• Conditional Statements insert content in your messages only if certain criteria is met (for example, a block of text can be set to only be viewable to people with an 'aol.com' e-mail address)
• Bounce Checker automatically flags and removes messages that have been rejected after delivery.
• Automatic HTML optimization system for lightning-fast message delivery and rendering.

They have a free download on their site that allows you to send up to 12 emails as a test. 

Wirecast makes it easy to create dynamic webcasts

Wirecast has been designed for building detailed multimedia broadcasts with many cameras, images, titles and movies etc. Traditionally such solutions have required expensive dedicated hardware and been out of reach to most users.

Wirecast introduces the unique concept of shots. You can package up your selected cameras, graphical overlays, movies and titles into a shot. Once you have built your list of shots, you can transition the broadcast between them with a single mouse click.

Controlling your broadcast in real-time is easy. With Wirecast's multiple layer support, it's simple to place a background music track or a company logo over your webcast, while changing between the cameras you want your viewers to see.   

Wirecast takes advantage of the QuickTime Streaming architecture (and Windows Media on the Windows platform) for broadcasting. Using QuickTime, you can unicast or multicast to your clients. When you want to scale your webcast up, you simply send your broadcast to a Darwin or QuickTime Streaming Server. Your viewers can then watch your webcast through QuickTime Player or embedded directly into a webpage.

Windows Media supports both a push and pull model, viewers can either connect directly to your machine using the "pull" method or when you need to scale up you can "push" your broadcast to a Windows Media Server. Viewers will connect either through Windows Media Player or directly inside a webpage.

You can try out the evaluation version of Wirecast at their website.

EyeTV HyBrid Gives the Best of Both Worlds

The TV folks at Elgato have improved on their EyeTV product by introducing the EyeTV Hybrid. EyeTV Hybrid not only handles the coax input that I have from my cable TV system, it also allows me to connect an antenna and view over-the-air Digital TV broadcasts. 

The EyeTV Hybrid does the work of two hardware products for the price of one. It delivers free over-the-air digital TV to your Mac via antenna, as well as, standard cable TV from a coax cable.

It simply goes without saying that the software provided by Elgato is the best software available for the Mac to allow watching TV in a window on the Mac Screen. It has many features including:

•    The ability to watch analog as well as digital TV on your Mac.
•    Browse EyeTV menus in Full Screen mode.
•    Rewind, fast forward, and pause digital TV.
•    Record hours of your favorite TV shows directly on your hard drive, and edit out unwanted content.
•    Find TV shows using the built-in program guide (USA only).
•    Export clips and entire episodes to your video-capable iPod.
•    Connect game consoles and enjoy zero latency game play.

Free Software of the Day: Sound Source

SoundSource is a tiny tool for OS X enabling you to switch your audio input and output sources with a single click. And with the System setting, you can transfer system beeps to a secondary audio source so you won't be disturbed.
Anyone who needs to use multiple sources for input or output knows the drag of going to the Sound Preferences to make the change.  This little Freebe takes care of the problem completely.

SoundSource is free from Rogue Amoeba.

Print Labels the Easy Way

Capable of producing over 40 label styles and sizes, the LabelWriter 400 is the small, fast and functional label printer for everyday use. The DYMO label software integrates easily with most of your favorite software applications - to print labels for almost anything you can imagine: envelopes and packages, files, binders, videos, name badges, CDs, and even more.

• Eliminates the hassle of printing labels with a standard office printer.
• Direct thermal printing means you never change a ribbon, toner or ink cartridges. The only supplies you ever need are the labels.
• Fast print speed. Just 1-1/2 seconds per label. Very quiet.
• High resolution printing means crisp text, graphics, photos and bar codes.
• Includes easy to use DYMO Label Software that makes it simple to design labels and manage address books.
• Easy to share over your Windows or Apple Macintosh network.

For printing individual lables or lables from your addressbook, this solution cannot be beat.

Does your Car iPod?

Have you ever wanted to be able to connect your iPod into your car stereo.  I sure have but I didn't get a good feel for the interface made by the manufacturer of the car.  Many people have posted how bad this connection. 

Then I read about the iPod interface from USA Spec.  Take a look at these features:

• Easy Installation - All cables are plug and play for easy installation.
• Adds Additional Aux Input - Besides connecting to an iPod, our iPod interface provides an additional aux input to connect other audio devices.
• Superior Sound Quality - True digital quality sound through factory radio.
• Uses CD Changer Function - Uses the CD changer mode to operate an iPod just like a CD Changer.
• Auto Maintain - Maintain current playlist when migrating your iPod from portable use to in car use.
• Auto Playlist Select - If no play list are created, the interface auto selects the first 5 playlist on your iPod.
• Rich in Features - Track forward, track back, select playlist, shuffle and random play are some of the useful features provided by our interface through a factory stereo.
• Auto Memory - Auto locates the last song listened to on each play list.
• Auto Skip - Skip 10+ songs in each playlist with the factory CD Changer FF
• button. Or, skip to the end of a playlist.
• Auto Charge - Charges iPod battery and auto stops after 1 hour of non-use.
• Auto Playlist Select - If no play list are created, the interface auto selects the first 5 playlist on your iPod.

Well, I can tell you it works just as advertised.  It was easy to install in my Honda and it plays beautifully.  If you are interested in such an auto interface, give these poeple a look.

Google Software Downloads for the Mac

Google is doing it's part for Mac users by making many of their applications availanle for our favorite computer.

Google Notifier provides easy access to Gmail messages and timely reminders for Google Calendar.

Picasa Web Albums Uploader allous upload your photos to Picasa Web. You can also add captions and upload easily from iPhoto.  Unfortunately, the Picasa application is not yet available.

With Google Toolbar, you can add a search box to your browser, block annoying pop-ups, and automatically fill in online forms in Foxfire on the Mac.

Google Earth gives fly over a 3D models of the globe. You can search for hotels, dining and more and get directions and fly the route.

With Google SketchUp you can easily create 3D models and place your models in Google Earth.  You can also share your models in 3D warehouse.

Google Widgets are available for quick and easy blog posting, reading your Gmail inbox at a glance and viewing your Google search history.

All these are available for free download from Google's Mac site.

Instant Slide Shows Wherever You Are

Here is the tip of the week from Apple.....

Let’s say you open a window and there are 20 photos in that window. Want to see a quick slide show of those photos? Just press Command-A to select all the photos, then Control-click on any photo and from the contextual menu that appears, choose slideshow. A full-screen slide show of those photos (complete with a nice smooth dissolve transition) will appear onscreen.

If you want to see only some of the photos in a slide show, instead of selecting all the images, just Command-click on the photos you want in your slide show before Control-clicking on one and choosing slideshow. To quit the slide show in progress, just press the escape key on your keyboard.

Mac OS X Mail: What is a winmail.dat attachment?

You may wonder what winmail.dat attachments are--attachements that Mail displays with a "question mark-over-text" icon.

The attachment means the email was sent from a Microsoft email application (such as Outlook and the Microsoft Exchange Client) and includes rich text information--how fonts, colors and specialized attributes such as underlining or boldface should appear in the email (the attachment doesn't appear in Outlook but does appear in Mail; it may appear in other email applications as a MIME section named "application/ms-tnef").

Avoiding these attachments

To avoid seeing these attachments in the future, you ask the sender to deselect the email's "Send to this recipient in Microsoft rich text format" checkbox or preference setting in mail client before they send the message.

For more information please see this Microsoft support document.

Using Your Mac to Capture and Output Audio: Part 1 of 4

A Review of The Septemer 2006 appleJAC Presentations
Part 1 of a 4 part series

by Greg Breuer

Computers are a money-losing venture unless you can use them to make money, personal enjoyment and satisfaction has a monetary value for you or the depreciation of the money you spend on a computer can be realized. The Macintosh has  a return-on-investment (ROI) that no other personal computer can boast about or point at as why you should buy it. As Macintosh believers, we become niche dwelers, not unlike the Jaguar owner or a  collector of Civil War coins. The world at large is then incredulous of our decision, our undying loyalty to a hardware paradigm that serves around 5% of the computer users out there. We know something they do not know-Macintosh is fun.

One strengh of Macintosh is easily making those things dearto you something saved or something archived. Do you like listening to music you listened to as a teenager? What about those pictures you took on the last family vacation? What if the music you like is on vinyl records or you want to show your pictures as a slide show with music and some video clips? If your personal computer can not do it, you either go without or you send it off to get done by some possibly expensive third-party service, professional, but not personal.

At the September 2006 appleJAC meeting, the capture and the output of audio was addressed by Tom Piper, Bruce Heerboth and Mark Snell. Perhaps you have forgotten the software/hardware used or you missed that night. As a member of appleJAC or a user of this website, your understanding of what you can do with your Mac and how you get it done is paramount and the goal of this series of articles is to educate and remind. The next article will be about GarageBand and iTunes.

Stay tuned.

Quickbooks 2007 goes Universal

Quickbooks provides tandard accounting tools for organizing your business finances with ease. Save time completing routine tasks, payroll and paperwork so you can spend more time on business.

QuickBooks for Mac works just like other Mac software. It has the ease of use you expect from QuickBooks, and the elegance and simplicity of the Mac. Plus, QuickBooks is an Universal application so it runs on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.

It all works together. QuickBooks for Mac integrates with your various Mac OS X applications like Address Book, .Mac and iCal.

Even better.... If you currently are using a Windows-based PC and looking to switch to the Mac, QuickBooks Pro 2007 for Mac is the leading choice for financial management for Mac small businesses.

Intuit even provides the ability to cross upgrade from Windows to the Mac.   This allows you to use the software you prefer on the platform you prefer.

What is Aperture?

Aperture is Apple's first all-in-one post-production tool for serious photographers, Aperture provides everything you need for after the shoot. Using its comprehensive collection of tools, you can easily import, manage, edit, catalog, organize, adjust, publish, export, and archive your images more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

Aperture features a RAW-focused workflow from capture to output that makes working with RAW files as easy as JPEG. No need to convert your RAW files before doing anything with them. Aperture automatically creates “versions” of your “master” images to preview, crop, color correct, sharpen, and apply other modifications to. What’s more, they’re all totally non-destructive in nature. Your RAW originals remain perfectly safe because Aperture doesn’t change a single pixel in them.

And with the most powerful image processing in the world, Aperture is fast — whether you’re working with RAW, JPEG, or TIFF images.

When Apple first released Aperture, it was priced at $499, which put it out of reach for many amature photographers.  SInce then, Apple has repositioned it for the Prosumer market and cut the price to $299 (even offering a $200 rebate to existing owners).

Want to learn more?  Head over to Apples Quicktour of Aperture website and view the movies of all the power it has to offer.